New glass, well, old glass, new however to my collection of lenses, arrived today.
For not too much, I was able to obtain a COSINON 55mm F=1.4 lens, made by Cosina. Just for the sake of completeness, this lens has got an M42 mount.
Two different plans for this lens: 1) digital photography with the EOS M or the EOS 350D, 2) astro photography with the "bellow cam" webcam adaptation.
Concerning the first plan, of course this will be all manual. Remember the M (manual mode) and metering for exposure?
- With the EOS 350D, this works like charm. The front selector next to the shutter release sets the shutter speed, aperture, old skool, at the lens' aperture ring. Focusing with the 350D is a bit tricky. It seems that the light paths to the sensor and through the viewfinder are not matched in the entry level DSLR, hence, the focus on the sensor is a bit closer than the one in the viewfinder. The very shallow depth of field makes it therefore difficult to get sharp images right away.
- As to the EOS M, in manual mode, the selector wheel at the back can be set to shutter speed. Since there is no mirror involved in the M, focusing is really easy. Due to the shallow depth of field, you can literally see the focus rolling over the sensor.
Of course, both cameras employ aperture priority, just in case you are tired of metering.
With both cameras, the center of the old lens shows beautiful circular bokeh. Moving towards the edges, of course, this get a bit distorted...
The second plan, the bellow-cam, my bellow-cam. This is a QuickCam QC4000pro, modified for long exposures, see earlier posts on this blog. The macro photography bellow is actually designed for M42 lenses, hence the F=1.4 lens could be a very good light collector.
Of course, the also in plan B for using the lens together with the EOS M for wide-field astro photography.
